Skepticism

EVENTS

History ruins all the fun

I was prepared for an amusing story — let’s all laugh at the dumb rednecks! — in this tale of Americans getting outraged because someone in Puerto Rico won the powerball lottery (apparently, that money is supposed to go to real Americans.) I knew that Puerto Rico was a US territory and that the residents were US citizens, so I am clearly superior to those goofs, but then the author answered with a history lesson about Puerto Rico. I did not know most of this stuff.

The U.S. “liberated” Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898. Later that same year, Hurricane San Ciriaco destroyed thousands of the island’s farms and nearly the entire year’s coffee crop. Of 50 million pounds, only five million were saved.

American hurricane relief was bizarre. The U.S. government sent no money. Instead, the following year it outlawed all Puerto Rican currency and declared the island’s peso, whose international value was equal to the U.S. dollar, to be worth only sixty American cents. Every Puerto Rican lost 40% of his or her money overnight.

In 1901, the U.S. passed the Hollander Act, which raised the taxes on every farmer in Puerto Rico.

With higher taxes, crippled farms, and 40% less cash, the farmers had to borrow money from U.S. banks. But with no usury law restrictions, interest rates were so high that within a decade, the farmers defaulted on their loans and the banks foreclosed on their land.

Chalk it up to a public school system that values instilling patriotism over reality. In the 1980s, I almost got kicked out of school for doing a paper on the Japanese internment camps in the US. NPS bookstores (mostly operated by non-profit partners (but the NPS has to approve items (including books) offered for sale)) are regularly castigated for daring to sell books that imply that the US, at some point, made a mistake. New units of the NPS (such as Sand Creek) have to run a gauntlet of local historians who, many of them if not most, focus on making their ancestors decision to murder a Good Thing.

Latin American and Caribbean history is a chunk I have neglected. Now I need to find a good history of Puerto Rico.

As a practicing public historian, though, the quote does not surprise me.

Puerto Rico is a living example of old colonialism. Just as the Spanish enslaved the native Taino to mine the mineral wealth the colonizers were to extract, the U.S. has long extracted the wealth of the island. They’ve done this by siphoning off its labor force while using any means necessary to sterilize Puerto Rican women. They’ve allowed U.S. investors to buy up most of the land to convert food crops to cash crops, causing widespread starvation and low employment while the companies operating these farms were raking in profits hand over fist. The cultural imperialism too has been aimed at erasure (check out “When I Was Puerto Rican” for an example; you’ll never look at a food pyramid the same way again). And all this time Puerto Ricans were U.S. citizens for what? So they could undergo the same ghettoization, employment discrimination, and treatment as something less than “real Murricans” while their neighborhoods would eventually be reclaimed by whites in the latest round of gentrification.

I’m glad you brought this up. The U.S. treatment of Puerto Rico is appalling. Appalling.

Sort of tangential, but I used to be one of those suckers who would shell out more money for clothes if they said “Made in America” on the label. That was before I found out about the garment industry in the Mariana Islands (“Territories of the US). You see, they do not have to abide by federal minimum wage or labor practices, but they are free to print “Made In America” on their label and jack up the price. I heard it was a favorite stop over for Abramoff.

In 1901, the U.S. passed the Hollander Act, which raised the taxes on every farmer in Puerto Rico.

It is funny that the US, which is basically a country founded out of a tax revolt, has always been completely gaga about taxation. When the colonies broke away from England, the first thing that happened, pretty much, was that taxes were raised to be more than they were under crown rule – except that there were no property taxes because that was how the founding fathers had stashed their wealth. From the very beginning, the US was founded on the idea of taxing the poor and sheltering the wealthy and powerful. Not surprising because, like all nations, it was established in crime by the elite and powerful.

Read A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. It is a reasonably accurate look at the full scope of American history, meaning it does not take the “Rah! Rah! We’re the best and did no wrong!” approach that pretty much every other American history takes.

Another intruiging book is History Lessons: How Textbooks from Around the World Portray U.S. History by Dana Lindaman and Kyle Roy Ward. The authors look at textbooks used at various grade levels around the world to show American history from non-American points of view.

@10 Gregory in Seattle — a bit closer to the bone would be Galleano’s The Open Veins Of Latin America (which, with all apologies to Professor Zinn, is far better written, at times soaring in its literary grandeur). This is the book Hugo Chavez gave as a present to Obama and Obama subsequently promised not to read. Which is a damn shame — he could have learned some things his neo-liberal banking team at the State Department will never tell him. But yes, our behavior toward the other 800 million people in our hemisphere has always been abhorrent, and, in many ways, that continue in the present day, worse than Spain’s.

Before he read it his opinion of Canada’s contribution to WW2 and D-Day in particular was, shall we say, dismissive. Also, he took great umbrage at the idea that the US forces in Europe weren’t solely responsible for HItler’s defeat. When I asserted that it was mostly the Russian Army that broke the back of the Wehrmacht, he became quite upset.

He’s better now though, and he regularly asks for more books from my personal library. It’s like he’s a different person.

Gregory in Seattle @#10:Read A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn

I second that. It’s sobering. BTW, the audio book version has large chunks, including the conclusion, read by Zinn. For some reason I enjoy having the voice attached to the book. That way when I read the text my brain makes it come out in Zinn’s voice. Zinn sounds pretty depressed, though. I wonder why.

Though the Commonwealth government has its own tax laws, Puerto Ricans are also required to pay most U.S. federal taxes, with the major exception being that some residents do not have to pay the federal personal income tax. In 2009, Puerto Rico paid $3.742 billion into the US Treasury. Residents of Puerto Rico pay into Social Security, and are thus eligible for Social Security benefits upon retirement. However, they are excluded from the Supplemental Security Income (SSI), and the island actually receives a small fraction of the Medicaid funding it would receive if it were a U.S. state. Also, Medicare providers receive less-than-full state-like reimbursements for services rendered to beneficiaries in Puerto Rico, even though the latter paid fully into the system.

Wasn’t there a British colony which revolted over, in part, ‘no taxation without representation’?

Devaluation is not necessarily a bad thing if a country has little to no foreign currency-denominated debt, as it makes exports more competitive. It’s certainly a strange form of aid, though many leftish economists have been begging for it in the case of Greece.

I went to an English ‘Public’ school (for non-Brits, this doublespeak means private and elitist) where we were taught how marvelous the British Empire was. The motive behind the Empire was, apparently, entirely altruistic, and the selfless administrators who ran it all only had the best interests of the poor, woe-begotten natives at heart.
I do remember, though, in one history class, we were shown a map of the Atlantic Triangular Trade, which showed how manufactured British goods like textiles were shipped from England to West Africa, where these goods were exchanged for slaves. These were then sent across the Atlantic and sold to work on plantations. The ships would then load up with cotton and tobacco, and made the return trip back, where these raw materials would be turned into manufactured goods, all ready to start the process again.
That word: ‘slaves’. Somehow it didn’t quite seem to fit in with the noble work that underpinned it all. But not to worry – no comment or explanation was given – this was just another thing to learn for Monday’s exam, and it was the only hint we were ever given that there was more to the story than we were being told.
History always seems to be taught to young children as part of a nationalistic agenda, rarely as an objective assessment of the past.

My father was born in Puerto Rico and raised there until his family had to move to New York City when he was 10. Our family rarely talked about the abuses Puerto Rico suffered at the hands of the USA. Most of them tried very hard to be loyal patriotic US citizens. Even then most have been marginalized and subjected to discrimination by society and US government policy. I suggest researching the mass sterilization of Puerto Rican women.http://silentcrownews.com/wordpress/?p=3460

Your comment makes me feel as if I grew up in a different country from you. (Not criticising, just making the observation.)

Our history class, aged 11 or 12, was divided into two ‘teams’ on that very topic of the textile industry. One team looked at slavery in the American cotton-growing industry, and the other tackled the treatment of workers in the English cotton mills. Assessment was very much part of the process. Almost too much, if you ask me; we learned nothing of the economics of the trade, nothing of the equally important effect on the Indian textile industry and so on. We really should have been taught those basic facts about the over-all picture.

I do remember, though, in one history class, we were shown a map of the Atlantic Triangular Trade, which showed how manufactured British goods like textiles were shipped from England to West Africa, where these goods were exchanged for slaves. These were then sent across the Atlantic and sold to work on plantations. The ships would then load up with cotton and tobacco, and made the return trip back, where these raw materials would be turned into manufactured goods, all ready to start the process again.

It’s interesting to note that the Triangle was originally started by the French, and then taken over by the British in the XVIII° century.

Chalk it up to a public school system that values instilling patriotism over reality.

We have something similar in Italy, where it’s quite common to justify our colonial empire (quite small for an empire, but still….) and our intervention in WWII by saying:

– “but nazism was far far worse better than fascism !”: that doesn’t make us better.
– “but Italy enacted racial laws only because Hitler pressured us, not because we wanted it !”: pure and simple bullshit.
– “but anti-semitism wasn’t never popular in Italy”: debatable.
– “but Italian soldiers were good and kind, not like the Germans !”: Jugoslavians would find that hard to agree with.
– “our colonialism was a good and respectful one, not like the British !”: the bullshit strikes again.
– “our colonies were faring so much better under our rule”: that still doesn’t justify it.

And finally, when everything else has failed, they’ll trot out this inevitable timeless classic: but what about the foibe then !!!!!!

Given where and how the term ‘Ghetto’ originates, I’m going to go with ‘bullshit’ rather than ‘debatable’ on this one.

My mistake: I should have written “in the ’30s/’40s” instead of “never”. As an aside, there are some venetian secessionists that would flat deny that (it’s not their weirdest claim, once one of them tried to convince me that the ancient venetians actually came from Atlantis and later fought in the Trojan War….).

went to an English ‘Public’ school (for non-Brits, this doublespeak means private and elitist)

It’s not double-speak, even though it might appear so. It just is a snapshot of the language in an earlier phase of history, before education was mandatory for everyone. While the aristocracy would be tutored privately, a “public” school was open to the public for a fee, which might be waived in exceptional circumstances.

went to an English ‘Public’ school (for non-Brits, this doublespeak means private and elitist)

It’s not double-speak, even though it might appear so. It just is a snapshot of the language in an earlier phase of history, before education was mandatory for everyone. While the aristocracy would be tutored privately, a “public” school was open to the public for a fee, which might be waived in exceptional circumstances.

a “public” school was open to the public for a fee, which might be waived in exceptional circumstances.

Also ‘public’ in the sense of ‘not parochial’; fee paying students could (and indeed can) attend regardless of religion or geographical origin, unlike the majority of schools at the time, which were explicitly religious and/or regional.

Apparently we USAians need constant reminders from our politicians of just how wonderful and exceptional we are. Just look at the shitstorms that happen any time Obama suggests that hey, sometimes USAians/Xians/Westerners maybe have done some things that weren’t, you know, 100% angelically perfect, and maybe sometimes our shit doesn’t smell like roses.

Interesting fact about Obama: he’s descended from perhaps the first official slave in the colonies. On his mother’s side.

American can really hold some hate for islands; I wonder if some of the birther movement is just reactionaries not being comfortable with Obama being born outside of the continental U.S. Of course, by that standard you’d have to admit Palin is just as geographically foreign (though it may help her keep an eye on Russia), not to mention McCain being born in the Panama Canal Zone.

That article is strange. It recounts all the ways Puerto Ricans are treated as second-class citizens, and then finishes with a comment about how they’re not second-class citizens. They definitely don’t deserve to be second-class citizens, but saying that they’re not minimizes the shitty treatment they’ve been receiving.

Also, coming soon: legislation restricting awards of the powerball lottery to residents of the continental states only.

There’s also that state which has outright banned the study of American history that is ‘too negative’, because it doesn’t emphasize the positive enough… I guess this history of Puerto Rico would just disappear into the Well of Lost History, too! Puerto Rico, meet Slavery and Genocide!
Ah, it was Oklahoma. And never fear, it was only an Advanced Placement United States History course…

In August last year, the Republican National Committee blasted the Advanced Placement U.S. History test, claiming it “deliberately distorts and/or edits out important historical events.” The RNC said a new framework for the exam “reflects a radically revisionist view of American history that emphasizes negative aspects of our nation’s history while omitting or minimizing positive aspects.” The College Board countered that the framework had not been changed since 2012.

Efforts by conservative school board members in Colorado to make the Advanced Placement U.S. History course “more patriotic,” prompted a walk-out by students. Under the changes proposed in Colorado “students would only be taught lessons depicting American heritage in a positive light, and effectively ban any material that could lead to dissent.” In South Carolina conservatives asked the College Board to exclude any material with an “ideological bias,” including evolution. Similar efforts are underway in Georgia and North Carolina.

Devaluation is not necessarily a bad thing if a country has little to no foreign currency-denominated debt, as it makes exports more competitive. It’s certainly a strange form of aid, though many leftish economists have been begging for it in the case of Greece.

Leftish? …By US measures perhaps. ~:-| Syriza itself doesn’t want it.

Anyway, Greece has staggering amounts of debt denominated in € and in foreign currencies. Abandoning the € and devaluing would immediately double the value of that debt.

I didn’t know most of that either, but I always thought our treatment of Puerto Rico was abysmal; in comparison when the Philippines was a US Territory it generally had excellent governors including WH Taft (later president of the USA) who instituted societal reforms, at substantial cost to the US government, which effectively eradicated the feudal system set in place by Spain. Over 100 years later and Puerto Rico is still such a sad case; its citizens, though US citizens, don’t even get a vote in Congress and remain among the poorest of US citizens. The citizens of the Marianas Islands and Guam are in a similar though barely better condition. Oh well, with libertardianism being one of the sacred tenets of Neo-Con idiotology, all of the USA will be like Puerto Rico soon enough – except for the 1% of people with money. All hail Ronnie Reagan!

@yazikus: the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas Islands was autonomous but US Congress later stripped that sovereignty because of the wages abuse. That was over 20 years ago now, so I have no idea if the CNMI is still required to stick to Federal regulations or if they’ve been thrown to the dogs again.

It has been a few years since I looked it up, but it appears they do have some ‘protection’ now. As of Sept 30, 2014 their minimum wage is $6.05.
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From a 2007 (I did say it had been a few years, how time flies!) article:

After years of protection from the likes of Tom DeLay and Jack Abramoff, employers on the Northern Mariana Islands would finally have to pay workers the federal minimum wage under legislation before the House tomorrow.

Democrats have long tried to pull the Northern Marianas under the umbrella of U.S. labor laws, accusing the island government and its industry leaders of coddling sweatshops and turning a blind eye to forced abortions and indentured servitude. But Abramoff, the once-powerful Republican lobbyist now in federal prison, spent millions of dollars from the island and its business interests currying favor with Republicans, aligning support with conservative interest groups and thwarting every effort to intervene in the Northern Marianas’ economy.